


To Finally Meet You

by embolalia



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Gen, Spoilers through 3x04, references to past sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 09:09:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12429597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embolalia/pseuds/embolalia
Summary: Five times Frank meets Bob Winterbottom.





	To Finally Meet You

In the morning, Frank’s father comes to visit, and in the afternoon Frank beats Bonnie’s father to within an inch of breathing.

He doesn’t know who he’s fighting at the time, hasn’t met Sam or Annalise or Bonnie herself yet. Frank is eighteen years old, newly moved to an adult facility, proving himself against this slimmer, smaller, older man. He takes a few blows to the face and arms, but only his knuckles are bleeding. The electricity of a taser on his skin brings him closer to the punishment he deserves than anything Bob Winterbottom can mete out.

Once the fight is broken up someone claps him on the back for mauling a pedo, and later it’s the only reason Frank knows why Bonnie’s father looks so familiar.

The next day Frank’s parole is denied again.

*

He opens her file in sheer innocence, a year into his catchall job with the Keating household. It’ll be a recommendation letter, Frank thinks. Or it’ll be grades, notes, something to tease Bonnie about.

Frank drops the DVD as soon as he understands what it is, sweat chilling the back of his neck as he shies away from the gleaming horror of it, belly-up on the rug. He reads through all of the testimony. Bob Winterbottom claims he loved his daughter, that in the beginning it was just tickling, just games, innocent enough. That he’d never hurt his baby girl. That she wanted it, that she loved him too.

Frank stalks back and forth across the room, unable to shudder away from the images in his mind. Bonnie, sitting in a courtroom at fifteen, listening to that trash. Pinned down, sobbing, six years old.

Going through Sam’s files is a deeper violation, but he has to know she’s okay. Sam thinks she’s recovering at least. Frank revisits every memory of brushing past her, of teasing her about men, of letting his gaze linger on the curves of her body. He forces himself to watch the first two minutes of the DVD before he slams it off.

It’s enough to recognize the man. He doesn’t know if his tears of relief are for himself or for Bonnie. His knuckles throb with remembered violence.

*

For six months Bonnie doesn’t know that he knows, and she snaps at him every time he tries to stick up for her, to get between Annalise’s acid tongue and Bonnie’s timidity.

Late one evening, Bonnie the only law student left in the house with him, Frank reaches for a stack of files on the table where the students abandoned their latest case.

“Don’t touch that!” Bonnie scolds from her seat on the couch. “I’m just getting them organized for storage.”

“You can leave, you know,” Frank says. “It’s Friday. Go get a drink. You don’t owe Annalise your whole life.”

Her sudden, pinched stillness reminds him of the recording. “Sure I do,” Bonnie says to the open file in her hands.

“Well, me too,” Frank says. He’s let the students make their own assumptions—usually funnier or sexier or worse than the truth—but he wants to tell Bonnie, wants to even the scales. “She got me out of jail,” he says.

Bonnie blinks at him. “For what?”

“When I was thirteen I tried to kill my father.” He laughs after, as though he’s just trying to scare her.

“I wish I’d been brave enough for that,” she says.

“Yeah?” Frank prompts. She’s looking down again or she’d read his knowledge on his face.

“He—for a long, long time,” she tells the file. “He molested me. Then when I was fifteen, I stole his car to run away and he actually pressed charges. Annalise got me out of jail, too.” Bonnie raises her dark eyes to his, but she’s not girded against his reaction. She knows somehow that he found out. And what’s more—she didn’t react to his comment about jail. It wasn’t news to her either.

Frank shrugs in relief. “Mine just—he liked his fists.”

Bonnie nods.

“She told you?” Frank asks.

A line creases her forehead as she frowns. “When she finally got you out—it was my first year here. You should know, Annalise didn’t just decide to help you out of the goodness of her heart.”

“Sam’s sister knew my aunt or something.”

Bonnie glances toward the stairs. There’s no sign that Annalise and Sam are even home, but Annalise won a case today. Frank and Bonnie both know they’re probably fucking. “You and me?” Bonnie says. “We were a trade. Annalise helped you and Sam helped me. And here we are.” She leans to pick up another stack of files and her long hair falls over her face. Frank has to resist the urge to tuck it back behind her ear, to hug her. If there’s anything he knows, it’s how to define family as the people you can’t stop fighting with, and for.

“You were brave enough,” he says as Bonnie turns away to slip the files into the right boxes.

She stills, turns her head but not far enough to meet his eyes.

“You can help if you want,” she says.

*

Five years later Bonnie asks if he’ll drive with her to Allentown, to the prison. She studies some scrap of paper on her desk while she waits for his answer.

“For a case?” Frank asks, though he knows the answer from her posture alone.

She shakes her head at the desk, risks looking up. “A parole hearing.”

“You don’t—I mean, yes. I’ll come. You don’t want Annalise?”

Bonnie opens her mouth but waits, gauging if he knows something. She shakes her head. “She can’t make it that day,” she lies.

Frank drives the first leg as they head west, but Bonnie takes the wheel after they stop for gas and candy bars. He holds the door handle until his knuckles go white, refusing to protest her speed.

When they reach Allentown, Bonnie signs them both in for the hearing. “Victim or next-of-kin?” the guard asks. 

Frank puts a protective hand on Bonnie’s shoulder before he can stop himself.

“Both,” she answers, and lets the word sear her shame into all of them as she pulls away.

Past the office, the prison smells like bleach and cigarettes. Frank takes Bonnie’s hand for both their comfort, shuddering away some of his own worst nightmares.

“You should wait out here,” Bonnie tells him outside the hearing room. “I’ll be okay.” She squeezes his hand.

Frank hears what she doesn’t say: there are some things she doesn’t want him to witness, things she’d never say aloud again if it wasn’t the difference between her father being free and not. “Of course,” he answers. “I’ll be right here.”

The guards lead Bob Winterbottom past a few minutes later, a scrawny man with graying hair. His nose has been bent by repeated breaks, and he hunches away from the guards, doesn’t even see Frank watching him. If it weren’t for the smell of bleach, Frank would be out of his seat already, pounding Bonnie’s father into the tile floor. It’s so much less than what he deserves.

As the door opens, Frank hears the man say, “honey?” and he knows one day they’ll have a reckoning.

*

Guilt over Annalise eats at Frank every minute of the day, invades his dreams, but it’s Bonnie he misses. That night in the basement, while Annalise was gone, Frank spilled it all out: the car accident, the money, Sam’s call, Lila’s throat between his hands. Afterward Bonnie nodded, and held him. He’ll never share that kind of intimacy with anyone else.

He gets an email first: an automated notice of a prisoner transfer. It’s confirmed in minutes by a text from an old contact in Allentown. For the first time in months, Frank can breathe. He set this plan in motion years ago, in the days after Bob Winterbottom’s parole was denied. At last he knows how to apologize in a way she’ll understand.

The preparations take a few weeks, but mopping is surprisingly calming even if the bleach surprises him each morning with its sharpness at the back of his sinuses. Back and forth, ticking off the minutes until he can be the tool of justice. Not even a tinge of guilt flickers at his conscience; he longs each night to see the man take his final breath.

“Who are you?” Bob asks when the time comes.

“Frank,” he answers, knowing the man doesn’t remember him but does remember Bonnie, is still storing up whatever trove of horrors he committed against his own child. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Bob,” Frank says, and promises him pain, promises him this is a consequence worse than prison, still not what he deserves. “Enjoy hell, Bob.”

Relief evens his steps as Frank pushes his mop and bucket back down the hall to put them away for the last time. He whistles as he drops the canister of hydrogen sulfide in a dumpster on his way out. 

He might have earned Bonnie’s forgiveness; he might never earn her forgiveness. But he loves her, and so he’s set her free.


End file.
